Tipsy
Support the web sites you read.
Tipsy is a Chrome browser extension that helps you to support online content. Just install it, set a contribution budget, and keep browsing as you always do. Tipsy will periodically schedule you to donate to the creators of the content you read, dividing your contribution proportionately among the sites you visited.
Tipsy charges nothing. It subtracts no fees or other payments from your contribution.
All you do is set a budget and keep browsing as usual. Tipsy periodically reminds you to make payments.
There's nothing to sign up for or install. No changes to your pages or CMS. All you need to do is register a PayPal or Dwolla account to receive payments.
Tipsy is completely private. No Tipsy server stores your browsing data nor does Tipsy identify users. Your information never leaves your browser.
Tipsy allocates payments proportionately among all the content creators whose content you consume. Your entire payment goes to the content creators.
Tipsy is completely transparent to both users and content creators. Tipsy has no hidden side effects and all the code is open source. Tipsy does not hold any payments — payments are processed through PayPal or Dwolla payment sessions where you pay the content creators directly.
If you would like to join our group of Tipsy Publishers and be kept up to date with Tipsy news please enter your email on the right and click to join our Tipsy Publishers Google Group.
Adopting tipsy only takes two steps: (1) Set up a PayPal or Dwolla account to receive payments, and (2) publish that account's ID in a single tipsy.txt file on your web site. That's it—you don't have to change a single page or any step in your CMS workflow. There's nothing to install.
If you have a more complex arrangement where different accounts receive payment for different pages on your site, you can manage that by placing a link tag listing your payment account in the header of each such page. That's all you need to do.
To use PayPal you just need your paypal email. For Dwolla you need to get a key. Paypal charges transaction fees while Dwolla does not. But more users have (and can pay with) Paypal accounts. You can use either or both on your site.
One way to get paid is to include a tipsy.txt file in the root of your domain. This file is similar in spirit to the common robots.txt and can be read by Tipsy to learn about how you accept payments. You can also specify different payment properties for your different sub-domains. Click on the following button to generate your tipsy.txt file.
Learn more about the tipsy.txt format.
Another way to get paid is to include a
link tag in the
head of your site with
rel="author" and
name="John Smith" attributes. You can then include the payment processors with whom you would
accept payment. You would insert something looking like this:
<link rel="author" name="John Smith" data-paypal="john@smith.com">
Click on the button below to generate the link tag:
If you want to encourage readers to install Tipsy, we provide a simple library that detects whether a reader has Tipsy enabled. This way you can place an indicator on your site to remind users that they can support your content through Tipsy, or to thank those who are already using it. Just load the following script into your site:
<script
src="http://tipsy.csail.mit.edu/tipsy-tools/checkfortipsy.js"></script>
Then you can check for Tipsy with the
boolean function
isTipsyEnabled().
You specify an overall donation. Tipsy uses the browser history to keep track of how much time you spend on various sites. Periodically, it reminds you to visit a payment page where you donation is divided up among sites in proportion to the time you spent on them. You effect those payments through your own Paypal or Dwolla account.
Yes. Tipsy lets out modify payments before paying so that you can pay more (or less) than what is owed.
No. All Tipsy payments are voluntary.
No. Tipsy does not store any information or make any changes to your browser that allow anybody to track you.
None. The Tipsy web site does not collect any information. All the browsing information that Tipsy collects stays in your browser.
None. Tipsy does not take a cut or charge a fee.
No. Tipsy has a negligible effect on your page loading time.
Tipsy currently supports PayPal and Dwolla.
There is currently no Tipsy version for mobile since Chrome browser extensions cannot run on mobile. We are looking into ways to integrate Tipsy into mobile browsing.
Not yet. A firefox version is currently under development.
No. It is possible that a version for these other browsers will one day be available.
Sure! Tipsy is open source so feel free to get to work.
Please feel free to ask any questions you might have to us using the contact form below.
The following sites have adopted Tipsy. Want to see yours listed here? Contact us!
Tipsy was devised by the Haystack Group. Funding was provided by the Knight Foundation under a prototype fund grant. Development was carried out by Bocoup Software.
